They have been back at Tommy's compound for three weeks when the power comes back on. Admittedly, the plant itself has been finicky since the moment Tommy and his crew inhabited it, and the break from being fully powered to back to basics is more than expected. All the same, when the lights flicker on the night he and Ellie are eating dinner in the dark, Joel's stomach floods with relief. He looks up from his can of whatever flavourless junk they are eating that week and meets Ellie's eyes. She half smiles, worn out from a busy day and longing to rest her head against the springy mattress plastered into the floor of her makeshift bedroom. Joel tries to return it, but he is hardly in the mood to be smiling at all. The last few nights, the nightmares have been so vivid they leave him sitting up in bed, shoulders shaking with sobs that are so quiet he is sure he is the only one that can hear them. After they hit, it is impossible to for him to get back to sleep, no matter how hard he tries – and he has tried.

Tommy and Maria have no idea about the kind of trouble Joel is having, and realistically, he doesn't expect them to. They are wrapped up in electricity and crops and 'twenty families strong'; they are wrapped up in the idea that no matter what, there is always hope. To Joel, the whole concept is so very Tommy – looking for hope where there is none; waiting for it to roll in on the edge of a storm cloud. And by the time those storm clouds roll in, Joel is sitting up against a cold metal wall, wiping tears on the back of his hands, wondering what the hell he did to deserve having images of Sarah and Tess and Ellie on that operating table burned into the back of his eyelids. So when the lights flicker on during that dark dinner, Joel can only hope that the electricity can offer him more than his usual routine, hope that it can take his mind off of whatever it wants to flock to and keep the memories at bay.

Ellie yawns and looks down at her food can. It is empty, but her stomach still rumbles with the sounds of insatiable hunger.

"Looks like it's gonna be a good night," she tries tentatively, watching Joel. Since the incident at the hospital, talking with each other has been a task of walking on eggshells, trying to not step on each other's toes. And Ellie knows that something is not right, because just like those eggshells, there is a crack between them, and there is no way she can ignore it anymore, "Think they're gonna keep it running this time?"

Joel can only bring himself to give her a one word answer, "Maybe."

They sit in silence for a while longer, although they are no longer in the dark, until Ellie stands up with her food can in hand and looks down at him. Joel will not meet her eyes, "Well, uh, I'm gonna go hit the hay. I'm pooped. I'll see you tomorrow?"

He grunts, a sound that comes from the back of a throat suddenly so dry that he starts looking for water, "'Night."

They part ways for the night, Joel feeling mighty guilty for being so damn cold to the little girl, and Ellie wondering what the hell she has done this time to make the usually quiet man even quieter.

Four hours later, she is awake, hearing sounds she has never once heard in the three weeks she and Joel have spent at Tommy's compound. They are breathy, pained sounds, and at first, Ellie reaches for her gun, convinced that some runners have managed to get past the electric fence. But these are not the pained noises of a victim to cordyceps. They are not the primal sort of sounds that the infected carry. These sounds are like shattered glass, the sounds of someone who has woken up with a mind battered, broken, and cut raw. Heart beating frantically, Ellie rises from her mattress and creeps towards the door, swapping her gun for her switch blade. She opens the door quietly, the hinges creaking despite almost a year of use. In the hallway, the sounds are louder, piercing the silence like a knife – and, to her surprise, they are coming from Joel's room. Ellie leans against the wall, taking a deep breath before turning the handle of his door.

The room is dark, but in the moonlight coming through a high window she can see Joel leaning against the wall, knees pressed to his chest as tightly as he can get them. He is looking straight at the floor, his shoulders trembling and his elbows resting on his thighs. Ellie takes a tentative step into the room. Joel does not notice her at first – he is talking to himself in whispers that Ellie does not understand, still making the pained noises she had heard from her room.

"Joel?"

He looks up, jumping a little from the shock, and looks at her with eyes rimmed red from tears. Ellie is thrown by the spectacle. She is used to the quiet Joel, but this is something entirely different; this is something she's never seen before. This is not the Joel that keeps his pain to himself, or the Joel that pushes away the people that care about him. This Joel is broken, and Ellie finds herself more scared of that than almost anything the two of them have faced together. When he does not answer her, Ellie steps closer to him, placing one foot on his mattress.

"Joel?" She tries again. Again, there is no answer. Ellie reaches out and places a hand on his shoulder, "Joel? Are you okay?"

Joel shakes his head, because he is not sure whether or not he is able to speak. Ellie's hand travels from his shoulder to the palm he has resting on his thigh, and she tugs on it.

"Hey. Come on, I know somethin' that'll make you feel better."

He allows himself to be dragged from the bed, quiet and still shaking. The images in his head have never been so vivid, never been so much like the real thing, and he is unable to stop himself from feeling guilty over all the things he cannot help. He allows Ellie to pull him through the silent, dark hallways until she stops in front of what is essentially a small common room. When she opens the door, Joel looks at her questioningly.

"What're you doin'?" His voice is small and broken, but the gruff tone is still there.

She leads him into the room and forces him down cross-legged, in front of the small TV set Tommy salvaged from an abandoned house. Ellie stares at him.

"I hate bad dreams."

Joel remembers those words from their first day together, and they send a strange wave of icy calm through his bones. Ellie holds up a finger and crawls over to a box beside the TV. There is a collection of DVDs there, and the one she selects makes Joel smile weakly against his will.

"Dawn of the Wolf: Part 2. You said you saw this one, but 'm still not convinced that girl doesn't get gutted. I mean, look at the poster! It's bizarre."

In this little room in the middle of a power plant, Joel feels more at home and more calm than he's felt in a long time. The images behind his eyelids are not gone, but he can feel them melting into a different place – a place where he is no longer plagued by nightmares and what-ifs. He closes his eyes, remembering the movie in Ellie's hand and seeing it years earlier with Sarah.

"Joel?"

He takes a deep breath through his nose, "You ever even seen a movie, kid?"

A grin splits Ellie's face, "Nope. You keep showin' up for all my firsts, you know that?"

Joel laughs, and the chuckle seems to fill in the crack between them that Ellie has been so anxious about. Ellie puts the disc into the DVD player and turns the TV on. The picture crackles to life, and Joel realizes that this is the first time in a long time that he's seen a working television. As the opening credits roll across the screen, the two lean back against the wall, watching with all the attention and devotion of young children.

Sitting there, watching the 'dumb teen movie', Ellie realizes there is no place she would rather be in the wee hours in the morning, and Joel decides that maybe, just maybe, the nightmares aren't as bad as he thinks.


Whoops this is bad, but at least I updated?